At the living-room table, Grete was playing with her cigarette-cards and transfers. She was a lumpish child of twelve years old, pretty in a sugary way, but round shouldered and too fat. My presence made her very self-conscious. She wriggled, smirked and kept calling out, in an affected, sing-song, “grown-up” voice:

“Mummy! Come and look at the pretty flowers!”

“I’ve got no time for your pretty flowers,” exclaimed Frau Nowak at length, in great exasperation: “Here am I, with a daughter the size of an elephant, having to slave all by myself, cooking the supper!”

“Quite right, mother!” cried Otto, gleefully joining in. He  turned upon Grete, righteously indignant: “Why don’t you help her, I should like to know? You’re fat enough. You sit around all day doing nothing. Get off that chair this instant, do you hear! And put those filthy cards away, or I’ll burn them!”

He grabbed at the cards with one hand and gave Grete a slap across the face with the other. Grete, who obviously wasn’t hurt, at once set up a loud, theatrical wail: “Oh, Otto, you’ve hurt me!” She covered her face with her hands and peeped at me between the fingers.